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Lot essay

This card table, elegantly serpentined in the George II picturesque manner, has beribboned reeds binding its top in the Italian manner and antique flutes enriching its frame and truss-scrolled legs. The latter terminate in Ionic volutes and are richly carved with Roman acanthus cartouches, while the tables fretted frieze is filigreed with a ribbon-guilloche in the old English or Gothic manner popularised in 1742 by the architect B. Langley in his Ancient Architecture Restored, or Gothic Architecture Improved by Rules and Proportions.
The leg pattern corresponds closely to that on a suite of seat furniture supplied in 1756 for the Earl of Leicester at Holkham Hall, Norfolk by the Soho firm of Messrs Paul Saunders and George Smith Bradshaw and described by them as being 'richly carved to match a pattern' (see R.Edwards, The Shorter Dictionary of English Furniture, London, 1964, p.144, fig 108; and J.Cornforth, 'French Style, English Mood', Country Life, l October l992, p.80).

Paul Saunders and George Smith Bradshaw went into partenership probably from 1751 actively supplying the upper stratas of society although their partnership was not long lived, being dissolved in 1758. It is interesting to note that upon their separation, Bradshaw continued at his workshops in Greek Street, having taken on John Mayhew as his apprentice in 1756, while Saunders moved to Soho Square, working in partenership with William Ince.

A number of distinguished pieces of case furniture dating from the third quarter of the eighteenth century are mounted with metalwork bearing the stamp of H. Tibats. Peter Thornton suggests that he Tibats may have been based in Birmingham, perhaps a rival to the rapidly expanding firm of Boulton and Fothergill (see P. Thornton, Furniture History, 1966, vol.II, pp. 44-45, pl. XXII).

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Provenance

Probably commissioned by Catherine Freman (d.1763), who succeeded to the Tyttenhanger Estates on the death of her brother, Sir Harry Blount, and may have acquired the table upon the occasion of her daughter's marriage in 1755.
Thence by descent until sold by the Earl of Caledon, Christie's London, 12 March 1981, lot 32.